In April, our team engaged with clients in a variety of ways. The Client Outreach department, consisting of John Wynn, Iva Mikulandra Barkiđija, Hanna Quevedo, Lana Jergović, Kelly Spagnola, Laura Wontor, Denise Florendo, Sara Maričević, Craig Oppenheimer, Bryan Sheffield, and Andrew Souders produced some noteworthy updates.
We added 202 companies and 374 people to our database this past month. Additionally, we updated 1,195 companies, 1,716 people, and sent out over 380 emails to producers, art directors, creative directors, marketing managers, and photo editors. Below are some examples of the projects our team has been diligently working on.
I’ve been working in the “Oldest in WordPress” role for over a month now and focusing on making sure our photography buyers’ companies are completely updated in terms of their websites, Instagram pages, LinkedIn profiles, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and other critical information. It can sometimes be challenging when companies change names, are acquired by other companies, or even just account for all of the various office locations that the bigger agencies can have.
This month I started updating the records of companies that are publications. What is new to me in my new role was to update the records of the people connected to those companies, or potentially even add others, if need be. Our policy is to be mindful of the appropriate contacts at each company, so that we may talk to them about our amazing member photographers. The most interesting part was to learn about different job titles and what each of them entails. For example, if one person is a Creative Director for a parent company, that person could hold the position for only one of their child companies. However, it’s not unusual that the same job title entails the same tasks for several children’s companies. Throughout April, I enjoyed my role, but have since moved on to updating records of companies that are agencies. So far, this role is as interesting as the previous one, and I’m looking forward to learning more about different types of agencies and specifics about their work.
This month, I was focusing on updating our publications records, and then I transferred to focusing on agencies’ records. I came across an interesting case of an agency with many global branches that all had broken websites. It seems like the company consolidated all of the individual sites into one streamlined website. Also, Lara de la Torre (Photographer Outreach department) and I had a very nice call with photographer Nadja Wohlleben from Germany, and we shared a lot of new information about Wonderful Machine services and membership opportunities (we have options that fit every photographer). I was also happy to see our services working for my friend, Annick Donkers, who recently relocated from Mexico to Belgium.
This month I was updating records for people who work at publications, such as magazines, newspapers, etc. taking the time to update any records of the publication itself. Also, my role now includes sending emails to promote our photographers. What was interesting to me was the fact that I found a lot of people in the industry who transitioned from working at a publication to working at an agency or brand. It was a simple process of switching their record to the new company if they are a good prospect for us
In the month of April, the Group Art Supervisor at Pacific Communications, an ad agency in California, responded to an email I had sent asking for help finding quality photo retouchers. She said photo retouchers are something Pacific Communications is always interested in, but in her experience, it’s been hard to find really good and timely ones. They do a lot of clipping out of models and the hair clipping and maintaining natural skin texture are very important. I directed her inquiry to our producer, Andrew Souders, who sent her a comprehensive list of exceptional retouchers that we have in our database.
My role this month was still “Oldest Promoted” (which focuses on promoting our Member Photographers with the oldest “promoted” field date in our database), but I was also working on the US Beer Brands category throughout April. Here’s what I learned:
The main US manufacturers/distributors of beer are AB InBev and Molson Coors Beverage Company. While Molson Coors seems to employ their own creative team, AB InBev uses an in-house agency called “draftLine”. draftLine also operates in Europe, Mexico, and Canada.
I also received four replies to my initial outreach emails. Of those four replies, two resulted in phone calls. The first was with a group creative director from YAH, a full-service ad agency in Atlanta, who met virtually with Bryan Sheffield to discuss capabilities. My second call, was with an editor from the Washington Post to set up a free trial account by our producer, Andrew Souders.
The fourth month of the year for me entailed switching to the OOO Replies role. These automated emails that we receive are important especially for Member Photographers because there are emails that provide us with valuable information about that person or their colleagues or their company.
This led to the discovery of many client prospects which I added to our records. I also briefly continued adding Hospitality Tourism Visitor Bureaus companies to our data records and adding companies to the Hotel Chains category.
In April, I finished updating records of brands that had a blank employee count field, then moved on to updating and evaluating records of brands that had the oldest outreach date in our database. Looking at employees’ LinkedIn profiles is an important part of evaluating the company for Client Outreach. To have a better understanding of the brand, we separate them by the industries they assigned themselves to on LinkedIn. Since LinkedIn has slightly changed the names of some of its industries, we have to pay attention to the new industries in order to match them with our database records.
Last month, we connected with FGS Global, a PR/communications firm, to bid on a production for a biotech company and also with ad agency FCB Health to bid on a production for a pharmaceutical client. We continued discussions with Cencora (a pharmaceutical manufacturer), who we helped with a campaign earlier this year, about a production to capture images of two of their distribution centers. Another connection we made this month was with Edelman, a global PR/communications firm, to discuss an upcoming production for pasta company Barilla. As a final mention, we coordinated production for Momentum, a global interactive/experiential agency, with photographer Ahron Foster for American Express.
In April, Andrew Souders and I had a call with a Communications Officer at the World Health Organization to share Wonderful Machine’s capabilities and to learn more about WHO’s photography needs. Andrew and I also had a call with the 7-person creative department at You Are Here, a full-service ad agency, to present our capabilities of photographer/director search, custom stock requests, and production support. Their team was very interested in our photographer search capabilities, especially when considering the location, specialty, and gender of photographers.
This month, we also worked on a multi-day documentary shoot for the Kenvue IPO with photographer Benjamin Norman. Additionally, we produced a Member Open House with Ben around the topic of photojournalism and his coverage of Trump’s arraignment for the New York Times.
Some of the current projects we are bidding on with clients include a 6-day photo production for a high-end destination resort and a single-day shoot production for a band.
I’m currently working on updating Fortune 500 companies and adding to Daylite the best prospects for our production services at those companies, such as marketing directors, corporate communications managers, senior and executive producers, etc.
This month, Bryan Sheffield and I had a call with a Communications Officer at WHO (World Health Organization) to share our production capabilities, photographer directory, and stock request services, and to learn more about the creative needs/photo projects at WHO. She noted that big considerations for them are flexibility since projects and timelines can change quickly. They appreciate having the ability to hire locally so that there are fewer logistics and complications with travel and procuring visas, as well as cultural sensitivity for the areas they are covering. We also shared details on our stock request services, which she thought was something she’d like to try out for certain projects that might not be as feasible to put together a custom shoot for.
Bryan and I also had a call with the Resource Manager, Production Supervisor, and Creative Director at YAH (You Are Here), a full-service advertising agency. We presented Wonderful Machine’s production, photographer search, and stock request capabilities and discussed a few scenarios and hypothetical run-throughs of how we could work together.
Have questions about how we promote our photographers? Check out our Membership page. Want to know how you can get the most out of your Wonderful Machine membership? Check out our Jumpstart page or just reach out!